Isolation, cloning and analysis of the hexose transporter 6 gene (HXT6) in a native strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae IBRC-M30069

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast is one of the most important microorganisms to produce ethanol. The S. cerevisiae has 20 genes that encode hexose transporter proteins. Among these gene families, seven genes HXT7-HXT1 have important an role in alcohol production. The researchers proved that alcohol fermentation goes up by increasing the expression of these genes which results in increasing ethanol production.
In this research, isolation of HXT6 gene by specific primers via PCR technology was achieved. The amplified fragments were cloned into pGEM-T vector and transformed to Escherichia coli and sequence analysis was carried out.
The nucleotide sequence of open reading frame of HXT6 gene revealed a 1713 bp long with a deduced amino acid of 570 residues. The estimated molecular mass and the predicted isoelectric point of the deduced polypeptide were 62.68 kDa and 7.89 respectively.
Discussion and The deduced protein sequence showed a high similarity to Hxt6p VL31(EGA76254.1) sequences registered in NCBI and also the highest similarity of this gene with HXT7 ( one of the hexose transporter) was observed. This finding shows that this gene (HXT6) and also HXT7 gene resulted from one ancestor gene by mutation in their functional domain during years.